THE FIRST MEN.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1019, 7 January 1911, Page 13

THE FIRST MEN.

THEIR BIRTH IN THE ICE AGE. Professor Boyd Dawkins, one of the great authorities on the mammals oi the Pleistocene or Ice Age, in bis Huxley memorial lecture "at the theatre of the Civil Service Commission in November, marshalled the evidence which points to the fact 'that,man first appeared in that epoch; ' .' The vieiy of the higher antiquity of man based on the discovery of shipped flints in earlier ages has been ritdcrea untenable, as- it can be proved that these forms.- can be,, and - indeed have been, produced by natural agencies; The skiill and thigh-bone ' found by M. Dubois in a "Pleistocene river deposit at Trinil, in Java,, in . 18S4, Professor Dawkins regarded- as belonging •to a real precursor of' man, hot only appearing at a point in the geological history where it-was to be expected, but. in a tropical region taken by Lord Avebury and others to have been the birthplace of the human race. .-i -sail i! ■ In Europe, continued"- tho"''-professor, .there is ample evidence of the existence bf'tho riv'er^drift dweller in the caverns arid "iii 1 Hie river valleys of the Glacial Ago over the whole region between the' Mediterranean and the Baltic." Europe in the Ice Ago was invaded di'yshod by -tho earliest men from the south by way of Gibraltar and Sicily. The clfmato then was qontinetal in character, with cold [winters'and hot summers. / ■

The river-drift man's implements mark his existence in-North Africa, Palestine, Arabia, mul India, and. oyer the south and middle zones ,of Europe'as far north as Yorkshire, crossing on foot from Germany and France. .. The cave-man, marking ah advance in culture, lived almost, wholly in the, regions north of the Alps., and Pyrenees, and. his weapons are found no*tl of Yorkshire. ■ The cave-men probably came into Europe from and retreated into Northern , Asia at the close of the Ice Age.

■The Ice Age was undoubtedly of vast duration, and 'the antiquity of man is correspondingly great; but, concluded the professor, "the more minutely I examine the events that . lave, taken ,ploco since man. appeared, in Europe; the mors profoundly am I impressed with the vastness of lis antiquity.andj.with.the.futility' of any attempt to 1 compute' it in terms of years." , . 1